Roommates and the Grey shadows

These days I had the opportunity to read the firts book of the trilogy “50 shadows of Grey”. I agreed with a friend of mine that it was an entertaining book: it will never be a Nobel prize. I refused to read the other two, because I think the end is quite predictable: after a tug of war, everything will get back to normal… In other words: at the end, the bossy one will be her and he will let her do so… Like in real life!

Yes, you guessed it: the book was recommended by women. After not reading that much for quite a long time, I accepted the challenge and I borrowed the first book (that I have already returned to its rightful owner). Before I read this one, I read a Marian Keyes book, a more entertaining and funny one, with a pinch of social responsibility. Her books will make me write another entrance in the blog.

I´m not going to debate if the trilogy deserves being a bestseller or not. I only want to point out some reasons why this literary genre is so successful now. I think there are two main reasons:

– The women´s sexual revolution. In our mums´time, even when they grew up after 1968, this revolution barely tickled them. Our generation and even the younger ones have broken the rules of old-fashioned conventionalism. At least in Spain we have been the ones that have learned and tried the sex toys: chinese balls, creams, powders, rings, poles, lingerie… I can´t judge American women but they seem to start discovering their own sexuality: there´s still lots of censorship in Amercan society.

– Crisis in Spain has created different type of couples: roommates that are still husband and wife and they can not live in different dwellings. Couples that share food, a place to stay and even kids but not affections. Women that, because of their circumstances can´t live on their own but they are alone, because they sent their partners to the sofa. All of the women, with different backgrounds but have something in common: sexual frustration. These women aren´t looking for a substitute in other men for many reasons: lack of desire to do it, not wanting a relationship based only in sex, not wanting to complicate their lives… In any case, the need is still there.

If we joint these two circumstances, it isn´t difficult to imagine that women prefer to give vent the frustration in a book that snap their imagination before finding a Mr. Grey that would complicate their existence. They prefer having locked in a book where he can´t hurt them but feel relief when they want and have him tied and controlled, as Mr. Grey wants to have “his submissives”.